[bitpush]

> And yes, they're not obligated to provide those binary blobs, but since they've been doing it for such a long while, not announcing it well in advance, like they do with the so many services they choose to discontinue, just adds to that list of things I dislike about them.

This is such a strange position. "I rely on an undocumented behavior, and I'm upset that things changed".

If you're a software engineer, you know not to depend on these kind of things, and there's no way to expect the library / framework author to reason about how people are using it.

What if someone else came up and said I'm using Pixel as a doorstop, and now that Pixel has a camera bump, it doesnt work anymore - I hate the company. Strange indeed.

[JeremyNT]

> This is such a strange position. "I rely on an undocumented behavior, and I'm upset that things changed".

Their support of Pixels with AOSP has been well documented! This has always been one of their selling points, as a sort of reference device. I've exclusively bought Pixel phones in recent years and this is one of the primary reasons.

Of course Google never made any guarantees, and a rug pull was always possible, but it's absolutely still disappointing and well worth commenting upon.

[GuB-42]

I have never seen this about the Pixel phones. Nexus phones were reference devices, Pixels are consumer-oriented devices, with exclusive features, not so different from Samsung or Xiaomi. The sales pitch is mostly about the camera and AI features.

Just the name change is telling. "Pixel" suggest a focus on pictures, whereas "Nexus" suggests a focus on Android itself (inspired by Nexus-6 androids in Blade Runner).

[bitpush]

I dont recall Pixel device being sold saying "Buy our device and install GrapheneOS on it". I'd like to be wrong, so I'm happy to read articles if you have any.

[lipowitz]

Nothing I bought in the produce aisle today had instructions for use. Should I leave it to rot?

AOSP recipes themselves list reference devices and they could have updated this with their announcement in March if they didn't want external developers procuring these things as bricks for their gardens. GrapheneOS is just a community of a AOSP derivative there are any number of AOSP derived things people may have been doing with these devices.

[bitpush]

I have a Macbook, and if I try to install Windows of it and fails, should I be angry with Apple? Should Apple be on the hook to make it work?

Or, how about Hackintosh (from yesteryear). Apple gave 0 support for it all those years when folks made it work, and one day it went away - and I dont remember saying Apple, please support Hackintosh.

[lipowitz]

Huh? Google gives everyone in the world instructions to make derivatives of AOSP and they could install them[1] on the reference devices which were all nexus/pixel. Google said nothing until they suddenly didn't deliver for those devices.

They made related announcements in March and certainly saw interpretations of their announcement by interested AOSP derivative maintainers.

That's not remotely the same as I figured how to boot X against so and so's wishes and now it stopped working.

[1] https://source.android.com/docs/setup/test/running

[coffeeenjoyer]

> If you're a software engineer, you know not to depend on these kind of things, and there's no way to expect the library / framework author to reason about how people are using it.

Libraries and frameworks, I assume you meant open-source here, are a different thing.

A phone for which I paid a good amount of money, now doesn't let me use a different operating system anymore while maintaining the same (or arguably better) high level of security. Something which was possible thanks to the hard work of the GrapheneOS community, for the past ~looks at wikipedia~ 6 years... But that is no more, because the binary blobs cannot be forked like you would normally do in the case of FOSS libraries.

> What if someone else came up and said I'm using Pixel as a doorstop, and now that Pixel has a camera bump, it doesnt work anymore - I hate the company. Strange indeed.

Well luckily they can't physically alter the phone which I already own. If I didn't like the looks of the new Pixel, then I simply would not purchase it.

What Google can do though, is (indirectly) stop me from using it the way I envisioned before I bought this nice computing device, the way many others have been enjoying before me.

Anyway, I wasn't just talking about whether Google are wrong or not to do this. They understand what the consequences of their action are, and that just makes it shitty in my opinion. Am I upset? No, just disappointed.

> This is such a strange position. "I rely on an undocumented behavior, and I'm upset that things changed".

I view your position to put up a snarky defense based on weak analogies, for Google nonetheless, equally strange. "I'm on the internet where people can have different opinions, and I'm upset".

[pas]

Most people are disappointed as far as I see. Upset at the greedy G after this many years of MOAR MOAR MOAR? Nah.